After the Joomla work we did in Qatar for a high profile school, we were contracted to do Joomla work for a major supermarket (that again, wanted to remain anonymous).
The work included:
– Installing a Joomla website. The latest version of Joomla was required.
– Modifying a Joomla 1.5 template to make it compatible with the 1.7 version of Joomla.
– Securing the Joomla website for PCI certification (the website passed PCI certification the day we left Dubai).
– Adding a product catalog and a shopping cart to the website, and integrating the checkout process with a payment gateway (non-PayPal).
– Connecting the product catalog to the actual physical inventory of the supermarket (The challenge that faced us here is that since the databases are connected, what will happen when a user buys a product online that was physically bought (at the same time of the online transaction) by a shopper while visiting the actual store – the solution to this problem was to connect the database to another, non-displayed inventory, a technique that provided a better accuracy of the availability of the product, but a 100% accuracy was never guaranteed).
– Alerting the user when his products are scheduled for delivery after he buys them from the website.
– Creating and sending newsletters to website subscribers.
– Automatically updating the Facebook fan page with the latest products (this took us a long time – but now we know how to do it)
– Allowing users to watch a product. When a user watches a product, he will immediately receive an email when this product is on sale.
– Allowing users to review/rate products.
– Optimizing and scaling Joomla to handle thousands of daily investors (see our post on the number of users that Joomla can handle).
We were delighted by the professionalism we received from the Dubai team working on the project; the Dubai team was really experienced and we worked together to deliver the project on time and on scope (all the requirements that were listed in the project charter were deliverd, and we met all the milestones set by the Dubai team).
Here’s what we think of Dubai:
– It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
– The stores there have the latest technology (yes, we are obsessed by technology).
– The people working there are very professional, and they have very high standards.
– Although Dubai is really hot, you don’t feel any heat because all the places are air-conditioned.
– We would really love to do another project there.
– Nearly everyone in Dubai speaks English, so we didn’t have any communication issues.
If you have a Joomla project in Dubai, then feel free to call our Middle Eastern office directly at +961 71 90 23 99, and we’ll take it from there!